An attack on phil's martial qualifications is not an ad hom in this case - an ad hom is not ANY personal attack as many internet wags seem to think - it is a personal attack used to fly in the face of logic.

So like, "What's two plus two?" "Four" "Man, **** you. You're a douchebag so that can't be right." That's an ad hom.

It's not an ad hom to question somone's credentials regarding a subject they hold forth on in a public venue. Especially when they publish garbage martial arts they've never used as working technique.

Come to think of it - Phil is prone to that mis-usage of terminology himself. Maybe our poster here IS Phil, finally having built enough bullshit up in the tank on his own little corner of the internet to venture back out into the big, scary public?

An ad hominen argument attacks a person's credibility without addressing his logic. That is exactly what has happened with Phil Elmore. Bullshido users very often dismiss his material not because it is illogical, but rather because he has no real-life experience in dangerous combat. To avoid ad hominen, one must treat the material as anonymous, criticizing only that which does not follow logically. Attacking the author accomplishes nothing.

Sure, but while the training approaches real life, it can never mimick it entirely. So whatever measurement you're using loses much of its value outside of sport-like competition.

It's true that no training can exactly mimic a fight to the death. However, what's a better fit in terms of necessary skills and attributes to a fight to the death? A fight, with certain limitations, until one player has the ability to inflict, at least, a crippling injury on another? Or practicing forms endlessly and indulging in mental masturbation?
Also, do not confuse engaging in 'alive' training (i.e. sparring in class) and competing. The two are unrelated.

Originally Posted by haughty

What difference does it make what sportfighters do? I'm no grand master, but it seems obvious to me that potentially fatal strikes must not ever be practiced in full force against a living opponent. How is admitting as much a "ridiculous excuse"?

They absolutely can, and must, be practiced full force against resisting opponents. Wear pads, goggles, armour or whatever the hell else is necessary to protect you and go to town. The aim is, as you say, as close as possible a simulation of the target activity, and few things could be further from that than compliant drilling.
The reason I still prefer the rear naked choke to the eye poke is that I know that my RNC is capable of stopping people quickly and with a minimum of fuss, even training as realistically as possible I can't ever say the same about the occular gouge.

I agree with you, there. Some of the most prolific and successful professional "writers" are just plain bad at what they do. Off the top of my head, Dean Koontz comes to mind as an example of this. On the other hand, I can't say I've read any of Elmore's published works, so it's entirely possible he is a disciplined author.

As someone who was first published at age 11 ("and now a word from a little kid" article on the benefits of public speaking, published by the local paper) -- I consider myself at least an enthusiast. Elmore is a writer because he writes, just like I am a fighter because I fight (which, incidentally, puts me one up on Elmore).

Originally Posted by haughty

I don't think it's really about self-preservation in the purest sense, but rather about having fun. I mean, it's not like anyone but Elmore is profiting from the Martialist--on the contrary, isn't he paying for web space? While the self-defense angle may have some practical use, I can't imagine his pursuits being any more or less applicable in real life than other MA styles.

Excellent. You haven't drawn what I would feel is the natural and correct conclusion from these observations, but you've hit the nail on the head.

It's not really about self-preservation. Except that it purports to be. It talks about it obsessively. And, most importantly, it makes the same bad conclusion that you did: that his "pursuits" are no more or less applicable to real life than other MA styles.

This is excuse-making. Some things are measurably better in unarmed combat. To whatever extent you want to

No, I think he just writes about the stuff because he enjoys doing so. And other people obviously enjoy reading it.
I couldn't agree with that first statement enough. It's about having fun ... having fun imagining life-or-death danger at every stage, walking around armed to the teeth and ready for life-or-death scenarios that will. not. happen.

And then making claims like this:

...

What difference does it make what sportfighters do? I'm no grand master, but it seems obvious to me that potentially fatal strikes must not ever be practiced in full force against a living opponent. How is admitting as much a "ridiculous excuse"?

Sure, but while the training approaches real life, it can never mimick it entirely. So whatever measurement you're using loses much of its value outside of sport-like competition.

[/quote]
Wrong. Are you a troll from his forum? This sounds almost like something that he would say -- seemingly harmless, but with not addressing the actual point.

Which is that the things that you do in MMA make you better at unarmed combat in a real confrontation. This isn't theory. Plenty of people on Bullshido, in their work as bouncers and police officers and other occupations, have the opportunity to test what they learn in MMA every day, in real encounters, in unexpected attacks on the street, in people that are gunning for them because it's known that they're good at MA, etc.

The bottom line is that to do anything that will damage someone in unarmed combat, if someone would beat you 10 times out of 10 in an MMA-rules fight then he will beat you in life-or-death unarmed combat. Period.

There are reasons for this. For instance: that any child who thinks about how to win a fight realizes that the throat is a good place to strike, and that for ages all kinds of fighting styles and training have focused on protecting the neck. Sure, in MMA, instead of crushing your windpipe when they have the chance they may opt to put you in a RNC instead. That doesn't change the fact that, because of their superior conditioning and training it will be they who have access to your throat in a real fight, and not vice versa.

Originally Posted by haughty

I don't think he does. He may downplay their importance, but that's a matter of opinion, subject to debate and better judgment.

It's also subject to testing. For all of his talk of intellectual honesty, he apparently forgets that as rational human beings who have been using science for centuries, we realize that human debate and discourse is trumped by cold hard fact. Doubtless he would have done well in ancient greece, where the ability to argue a point well was considered proof of the rightness of one's views, but we've moved on to a world of problem-solving and scientific methods, where opinion is trumped by cold hard fact.

Reason trumps rambling.

Let's consider:

Originally Posted by elmore

... point out that you cannot train certain techniques against live opponents because you will kill them. Chops to the neck and throat, eyeball strikes, the WWII combatives chin-jab (a palm heel under the chin) – these are examples of such maiming or fatal techniques that supposedly "don't work" because they haven't been depicted in the Bullshidoka's VHS tapes.

Strawman, PR bullshit. Avoids the real question, which is that of the value of competition. (And engages in labelling, a common tactic of the intellectually dishonest).

If they ARE that deadly, this still does not preclude the creation of competitions that test for them. Pad or cover these vital areas and use chalk. You can test for it. Is it physical? You can devise a system of competition that tests for it. We are rational human beings, and while I'm not suggesting that truly reasonable activity is something to expect from someone who clearly lives entirely in his own elaborately-constructed fantasy world, I don't doubt that even he could devise a system of competition that would test fighting ability to what he felt is a great degree of accuracy -- if he wasn't afraid to.

And if he feels that no system of competition that could be devised would be an appropriate measurement of skill, then you're back to witch-doctor, charlatan tricks. There's no evidence, there's no test that backs up what I am saying. But YOU'D BETTER BELIEVE. Or BAD THINGS could happen.

If you haven't gone to the trouble of creating open, freely enterable competitive system that tests for the qualities that you feel are really important -- competition that could be entered by, say someone with MMA experience -- and feel that your system of competition is more suited to real-life confrontation, if you haven't done that, then there is NO evidence. Even if the competition was just a series of sensors on a dummy, and you practiced neck and eye strikes, had an alarm that went of randomly and measured the reaction speed, "lethality" of the strike, and force, these are things that you could open up to competition. Anything and everything that can be effectively TRAINED can be turned into a competition.

Originally Posted by Phil Elmore

"Anatomy reveals that certain strikes are likely to be fatal. This isn't terribly hard to understand."

You're right. It's not. It's also not terribly hard to understand that without a method for testing whether or not you or people trained by you could ever actually deliver such strikes against a fit, agressive oponent -- with the kind of safeguard against bullshido that a freely enterable competition adds -- there is no evidence.

It is in the Twilight Zone of the It-Can't-Be-Known that people like Elmore, who sell easy answers, dwell.

Come up with a method of competition that tests for qualities that YOU feel are important, then. And don't ask anyone else to come up with it for you. The burden of proof is on the loudmouth with an opinion. No one minds you having an opinion, but without evidence to back it up it's just an opinion.

Without competition, there is no growth. Period. That is why free market economies always trump planned economies. That is why venture-capital startups trump government-grant startups. And it is why open competition creates all-around fighters who are more effective in physical combat than fat fucks like Phil Elmore.
(in case anyone would accuse me of labelling him: how is he not a fat ****? if he were to **** anyone, he would be fat while doing so. ergo, fat ****.)

Don't ask other people to come up with the tests for you; they already HAVE, in the form of MMA and similar systems of competition -- other people, people whose left asscheeks have probably given and taken more punishment in real-world conflict than Elmore has in his entire life, apparently think that
A) most "deadly" techniques actually aren't, in real combat,
B) that sportfighting makes you better able to use the ones that are, and
C) that, in general, sportfighting ability under rules like MMA rules makes you more effective in unarmed combat, period.

Elmore disagrees with them. He has no evidence. He just asks you to listen to him rationalize his lack of evidence.

Originally Posted by haughty

Well, like I said, I imagine it's mostly about having fun.

You imagine correctly, but they would never admit this. Let me quote Elmore:

Recognizing that there are people who will prey on you if given the opportunity – and that there are people who seek to make those opportunities – is not paranoid hysteria. It is merely realistic. Preparing to meet emergencies that have not yet occurred is not paranoid or mentally unbalanced. It is prudent.

Yes, as we see from that quote, Elmore is selling "fun." Nowhere is he implying that he and his followers are realists, dealing reasonably with and discussing realistic dangers, and effective ways of dealing with them. Nowhere except in everything he's written.

Don't be fooled. Yes, it looks like a site for people who have fun walking around armed to the teeth as a form of recreation regardless of reality, but that's not what they would have you believe. Hence, Bullshido.

Originally Posted by haughty

Oh, come on! Maybe his site is plagued with adolescent idiocy, but certainly no more than this one!

First: this site is mostly a discussion forum, not a "site." Most of the content is user-created, not "published" to the front-page by admins. I am referring to the adolescent fantasy inherent in his premise and featured writing, not worst-case examples of idiotic user-created content.

Free markets allow higher (and ultimately best-of-breed) highs, and the lows get weeded out; the forum format makes it VERY easy to skip past the worthless content to glean the good. This forum allows a wider variety of views to be heard, which means that people with opinions different from the authors of the site get more reward from posting here; thus, there is adolescent silliness (think of it as "less regulation" in markets, and the corresponding surge in the overall size and increased disparity between best and worst). But the lack of interference and the creation of a market that allows a more free expression of ideas results in a superior system with better ideas.

Elmore's extensive, obsessive use of PR techniques like labelling show that he is not about intellectually honest discussion. Particularly in his labelling of 'Trolls' -- he wrote a fucking dictionary of troll definitions, and there isn't a single comedian or free-thinker who would escape being effectively labelled by multiple definitions found there. That's a good sign that the labeller is full of ****.

In general, Elmore seems like a big fat joke. He's an amazingly ridiculous object, and bashing hypocrisy and pretenders is a big part of what makes the best humor funny. So, he'll get laughed at a LOT. Once more, for the sake of hilarity, this is the person we're talking about:

An ad hominen argument attacks a person's credibility without addressing his logic. That is exactly what has happened with Phil Elmore. Bullshido users very often dismiss his material not because it is illogical, but rather because he has no real-life experience in dangerous combat. To avoid ad hominen, one must treat the material as anonymous, criticizing only that which does not follow logically. Attacking the author accomplishes nothing.

Not just because he has, as you have stated, no real-life experience in dangerous combat. Which is, in fact, an important point, because plenty of the people on this site that have and do work as bouncers or policemen have years and years of constant experience in "dangerous combat," and thus he is hypothesizing at incredible length about a subject which they have tested themselves. If someone with years of experience as a bouncer knows that eye strikes are almost completely useless in reality -- and there appears to be a certain amount of agreement on this point, including by people who have given and received eye strikes and continued fighting, because they have developed pain tolerance -- then Elmore's lack of experience translates DIRECTLY into a lack of credibility, period. Doesn't matter if you think that your training lets you strike eyes accurately. People who try this stuff in the real world say that it doesn't work, and I further add that, again, it's something you can devise competition-appropriate tests for. For instance, by using goggles.

I'm not going to defend anyone else' attacks on Elmore. I frankly don't care if other people's arguments about Elmore were as childish as egging his house. He's a joke and that should probably be apparent from a mile away.

Elmore has zero credibility to start with, and his rambling attacks on sportfighting as "part of the problem" are quite interesting when you consider that he, himself, looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy with glasses. It's not ad hominem at all. It's more than merely reasonable to ask if there's a connection between being in terrible, laughable shape and believing that sportfighters, who to succeed MUST be in good shape, are "part of the problem."

Since he avoids reality like the plague and makes statements primarily concerned with the speculative and fantastic, he makes few statements that have enough substance to warrant debate. Instead, he engages in stereotyping and, well, ad hominem attacks against those he percieves as his enemies, like Bullshido. So people focus on the things that are substantial. Like his floppy man-boobs.

The bottom line:
If someone beats you in MMA-rules fighting 10 times out of 10, then they could kill you in unarmed physical combat if they had to. Mkay Elmore fans? Believing otherwise is unreasonable until you come up with an open and transparent form of competition that serves as a test of your training techniques and methodologies and a means by which they can be compared to others.

;) Well, my sarcasm detector is going off. But I'll just say that, hey -- it's certainly fresh to ME. I spent a large portion of one day reading probably more of his work than even some of his fans have. And it all seemed like such amazing, awe-inspiring bullshit, especially when a picture of the man himself was evident. I had to keep asking myself -- is this serious? It's satire, right?

I agree with JKDChick. It's a catharsis.

I truly cannot wait to get *good* at fighting. My mind is a temple (unlike my body, which has stayed in surprisingly good shape but which I neglect horrifically right now), I've been offered radio jobs on the strength of my voice, and I have plenty of public-speaking and debate experience. I would LOVE to record a sort of 40-second video short ridiculing that delusional dimwit's views on sportfighting.

;) Well, my sarcasm detector is going off. But I'll just say that, hey -- it's certainly fresh to ME. I spent a large portion of one day reading probably more of his work than even some of his fans have. And it all seemed like such amazing, awe-inspiring bullshit, especially when a picture of the man himself was evident. I had to keep asking myself -- is this serious? It's satire, right?

I was writing that post before you'd posted, so my comment was actually to people who thought they'd dredge up Phil Elmore again. I've only been a member for 10 or 11 months, but for ALL of that time, people keep starting these arguments.

As for you spending a day reading his work, you should ask for your day back.